Nine Former Houston Texans Quarterbacks Played In Preseason Week 1

This past Friday, in the wake of Cleveland's first taste of what a Brock Osweiler postgame press conference feels like (more on that in a second), I got an email from my boss to the group of hosts at SportsRadio 610. I don't know if this is legwork that he did on his own, or if he pulled this interesting (and horrifying) little factoid from somewhere else, but he sent us the list of teams with the most former quarterbacks on OTHER teams' NFL rosters this preseason.

Never has a list been simultaneously more complimentary and shed more light on a single human being than this one. On the one hand, head coach Bill O'Brien has squeezed three winning seasons from a gaggle of quarterbacks who find themselves on a list of teams who have recently picked (or will probably soon pick) first or second in the NFL draft.

On the other hand, O'Brien's fingerprints are all over the selection and coaching of all of these castoffs. At this point, it doesn't really matter how we process the O'Brien Experience — he will sink or swim based on how quickly and efficiently he can turn Deshaun Watson into a winning NFL quarterback.

And that brings us to the really happy part of this post — none of the quarterbacks on this list are of any worry to Texan fans anymore. In fact, I wish most of them well! If you want to try to name the nine former Texan quarterbacks in the league right now, then hold off on skimming down this page, as they are listed below. In fact, let's go through the performances of all nine of them (in varying degrees of detail).

Here you go, the NFL equivalent of going through the list of all your teenage breakups (except these are breakups that crushed your soul, emptied your bank account, and may have given you some sort of infection that required antibiotics):

HEADLINERSBROCK OSWEILER, Cleveland (6-14, 42 yards, 50.3 passer rating) I fully understand that it's the job of an NFL team's social media employees to promote the squad, regardless of how abjectly terrible the team is. However, there should be limits. For example, someone might want to let the Cleveland Browns know that doing a hype video for Brock Osweiler is not advisable...

... and with every clownish sound bite in post game press conferences...

Of course, the only team ahead of the Texans on the list above is Cleveland. They're the Browns for a reason. In a weird way, the Osweiler-Cleveland marriage was probably destined to happen.

RYAN MALLETT, Baltimore (9-18, 57 yards, 57.2 passer rating) As a Texan, Brock Osweiler was bad and overpaid. Ryan Mallett was probably slightly better as a player and far less wealthy at game check time, but there is no questioning that Mallett did absurdly dumb things when he was given the keys to the franchise. First, he overslept in training camp after losing the starting job to Brian Hoyer in 2015, and then he missed a flight to Miami in Week 7 of the 2015 regular season after being benched in favor of Hoyer the week before. Now, he is starting in Baltimore while Joe Flacco rests his back, and he started the preseason with a positively Mallett-ian performance, with 50 percent completion percentage and lasers zinged at receivers who were within whispering distance of the pocket.

Sean Pendergast is a contributing freelance writer who covers Houston area sports daily in the News section, with periodic columns and features, as well. He also hosts afternoon drive on SportsRadio 610, as well as the post game show for the Houston Texans.